As segmented as the modern marketplace has become, one lone retailer has impacted nearly every facet of commerce, no matter the industry – Amazon. What started in books has now exploded to reach its ever-expanding tentacles into everything from cloud storage to grocery delivery, and nearly every possible point in between.

In fact, Amazon has grown to the point where it has taken almost mythological proportions, enamored and envied by some, detested and reviled by others. No matter what your personal opinion on Amazon might be, as a business owner or entrepreneur, you cannot deny the fact that what started as a little online bookstore in a Seattle garage has become the stuff of legend.

To that point, Amazon is a living, breathing example of what innovation, tenacity, and a forward-looking point of view can do for any company, including your own. The Amazon Effect is very much real and ready to help guide you down your own path if you’re willing and able to follow its lead.

We’ve taken lessons gleaned from concepts like the Amazon Effect to heart at Paragon Honda. However, as intimidating, frustrating, or overwhelming as today’s dynamic marketplace might be, I assure you of this – something like the Amazon Effect should motivate and inspire you to accel, not fill you with terror.

The Amazon Effect and Reinvention

While the Amazon effect might have started as a case study in supply chain logistics, it has become more of a catch-all to a way of operating or even looking at the market in a way that refines, redefines the status quo. In short, the Amazon Effect is about intelligent disruption, refusing to accept things as impenetrable or immovable but just in need of a new perspective.

To give the concept the proper context, think about what the supply chain was like just a few decades ago. It was big and cumbersome, inflexible and lacked any semblance of agility. Historical sales figures exclusively informed product shipments and inventory levels so any shift in consumer preferences would inevitably require months for distribution analytics to catch up.

Now think about the modern supply chain and how it has evolved over the last 20 years, primarily due to Amazon and its revolutionary distribution model. The marketplace is now almost entirely pliable, able to instantly bend and contorted self according to the ever-shifting demands of a fickle consumer base with interests that change by a stiff breeze.

Rather than waiting four to six weeks for an order to arrive, customers now expect deliveries to be sitting on their doorstep hours from the time of the initial order. This concept, in a nutshell, is the Amazon Effect – a complete reinvention of standard business practices, changing the customers very definition and perception of “good service” across every vertical.

Learn, Don’t Shy Away From the Best

You might be asking yourself what the Amazon Effect has to do with you and your own ambitions. Don’t look at the concept is something strictly about the supply chain but, instead, about a different way of looking at modern business. There are always going to be competitors that are bigger, faster, with more capital and for more resources available, but that doesn’t mean that your best response is to run in the opposite direction.

Instead, follow Amazon’s lead and make the absolute most of what you have at your own disposal to carve a niche out of the market. Just as Amazon did in the 1990s, leverage the benefits of readily available technology to maximum effect. Amazon didn’t invent the internet, nor did they create Federal Express/UPS, instead Amazon leaveragered the stuffing out of these existing technologies/platforms to provide unheard of service for their clients across multiple business models. Automate your marketing message across social media, email campaigns, and any other distribution channels you think beneficial to establish brand identity and a unique, compelling narrative.

The point is this – take Amazon’s lead and never stop innovating, disrupting, and reaching. Make the most of the tools available to maximize impact. And most importantly, always take direction from the best in class, bending their innovative thinking, practices, and procedures to suit your specific needs.